Chickens are sensitive to light. Any change of lighting conditions may affect the physiology, behavior, growth rate, etc. of chickens to a certain extent. It is a universal practice to blindly adopt supplemental lighting with a view to raising the economic benefits. However, blind supplemental lighting will not increase growth rate of chickens; instead, it may affect the growth and development and healthy and lower the quality of chicken.
Incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamp are commonly used for supplementing lights in the conventional art of light supplementation; but the source of the two lamps has the disadvantages of high energy consumption, short service life and poor controllability. Compared with conventional light sources, LED light sources have higher incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency, light utilization efficiency and energy saving effects. Therefore, it is highly advantageous to substitute conventional light sources with LED light sources.
There is no scientific standard guidance available for most farming enterprises or farming households to control light source, light intensity, duration, etc. of light supplementation; so they supplement light at their discretion, causing low yield and serious waste of resources, especially in selecting a LED light source. This is because there is a wide range of spectrums with great differences of LED light sources to choose from and an undesirable spectrum will produce unwanted stress in chickens, affecting chicken's health and growth. It is difficult to find a single-color light for LED lighting that can not only improve the production of egg, but also minimize energy consumption. The mainstream product in the market, LED white light, is cheap and of high luminous efficiency, but it has important defects for being composed of red light and blue light and is not conducive to the growth of chickens. Therefore, it is necessary to add proper single-color lights to the LED white light so as to compensate for the defect. Given the problems above, there is a need for study on the hybrid LED lighting method for chicken coops.